Last update:
Fri Jan 10 01:30:32 2025
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It amazes me how people fail to communicate when speaking about technical matters. I’m sure you have heard this refrain: “My computer doesn’t work” or perhaps “Program XYZ blows up”. Ok, in the general sense there is some information being conveyed here. Often times the speaker is not merely providing a fact but asking for help in a very oblique manner. Before you think I’m picking on the poor newcomer, I’m not.
This is an experience report–your mileage may vary_ I decided to give JUMP another try today. So I downloaded the latest release (1.2) and unzipped it into a directory. Looking at the JUMP Installation Guide reveals the document is written totally for Windows users. No problem, but I’m using a Mac. Looking in the bin directory there is a shell script named JUMPWorkbench-mac.sh. OK, make that executable and give it a go:
The MapServer Technical Steering Committee today approved an RFC that calls for MapServer to join the newly formed Open Source Geospatial Foundation. A poll has been put up on the MapServer site (login required) to collect the responses from the community. So far the vote is unanimously in favor of joining, although the poll has only been open for about an hour. Some thought it interesting that MapServer didn’t join immediately, given it was at the center of the failed MapServer Foundation attempt at the end of last year.
The Plugin Builder is a great tool for generating a working plugin project that you can customize. One of the main tasks in the development cycle is deploying the plugin to the QGIS plugin directory for testing. Plugin Builder comes with a Makefile that can be used on Linux and OS X to aid in development. Depending on your configuration, the Makefile may work on Windows. To help in managing development of your projects, we’ve come up with another option—a Python tool called pb_tool, which works anywhere QGIS runs.
The death of the shapefile has again been predicted—this time for 2010. The technical description of the format has been around for going on 12 years. In that time it has become a sort of lowest common denominator for data exchange. They’re everywhere. Making them go away is going to require a revolution of sorts. ESRI has been sounding the death knell for the shapefile for a while now. I agree that it isn’t a perfect format but it is nearly perfectly supported.
The QGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) has announced a call for nominations to fill three vacant positions: Design Advisor Infrastructure Manager Release Manager Nominations are open until August 24, 2013. For details on the PSC, vacancies, and how to nominate someone, see the [Call for Nominations August 2013] (http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/wiki/Call_for_Nominations_August_2013).
And so it begins. Chad has made a plea to Microsoft to help sort out issues with the latest World Wind release and Vista. The new security features are causing problems and I suspect that World Wind won’t be the last project to have to deal with it. So far the QGIS project has yet to get an experience report from anybody using Vista. Who knows what that will bring….
This week we take a look at a how to plot a terrain profile using the Profile plugin. The plugin can be used with any raster format supported by QGIS. You can can display profiles from up to three rasters at once, allowing you to compare the results. To illustrate, we’ll create a simple profile using a DEM of a 1:63,360 quadrangle in Alaska. Installing the Plugin The Profile plugin is installed like all other Python plugins.
The QGIS project has a number of support channels. Like many open source projects, these are loosely coupled. Recently the forum was made read-only and this has prompted a number of questions and concerns about how to receive support. This post outlines the ways in which you can get your questions answered. Home Page The QGIS home page has links to all the documentation and community resources. The navigation panel on the left has links to both the Community resources and the manual.
I’ve had to lower my expectations of the Open Source GIS user community. Now that I have your attention, I’ll explain. The OSGIS user community by and large is composed of a great bunch of folks. Its the few that have soured my outlook a bit. I repeatedly see posts to mailing lists blasting one application or the other (usually not to the project’s own list but another). The software stinks, doesn’t work right, the developers are stupid, its not as good as X, Y, or Z, and so forth.
The MapServer Technical Steering Committee today approved an RFC that calls for MapServer to join the newly formed Open Source Geospatial Foundation. A poll has been put up on the MapServer site (login required) to collect the responses from the community. So far the vote is unanimously in favor of joining, although the poll has only been open for about an hour. Some thought it interesting that MapServer didn’t join immediately, given it was at the center of the failed MapServer Foundation attempt at the end of last year.
I guess Ubuntu must be popular. I’m just trying to upgrade my Feisty install so I can do the upgrade to Gutsy. Looks like it’s going to take a while…
The forum (http://forum.qgis.org) has been closed for new registrations and marked read-only. Users have been encouraged to use http://gis.stackexchange.com instead. If you have an thoughts on the closure, good, bad, or otherwise, please comment.
It amazes me how people fail to communicate when speaking about technical matters. I’m sure you have heard this refrain: “My computer doesn’t work” or perhaps “Program XYZ blows up”. Ok, in the general sense there is some information being conveyed here. Often times the speaker is not merely providing a fact but asking for help in a very oblique manner. Before you think I’m picking on the poor newcomer, I’m not.
It was ten years ago, on July 19, 2002, that QGIS was officially unveiled. That first release was primitive, supporting only PostGIS layers and having little in the way of navigation controls. Invoking the open source mantra of “release early and release often,” I announced it on Freshmeat and waited. Slowly it began to attract attention—not all of it positive. Some questioned why I was starting a new open source GIS project when there were others I could join.
The forum (http://forum.qgis.org) has been closed for new registrations and marked read-only. Users have been encouraged to use http://gis.stackexchange.com instead. If you have an thoughts on the closure, good, bad, or otherwise, please comment.
Following the instructions for a “hard” upgrade in Chapter 2. Installation of the PostGIS manual results in large objects not being restored to the database. If you create a dump using pg_dump -Fc –oids and then use the postgis_restore.pl script, the oids will be restored but not the large objects. This is not really a PostGIS issue, it can happen when dealing with any PostgreSQL database. To remedy this situation I found that the pg_dumplo utility has the answer.
Here is the process I used to quickly build (OK, but it was faster than usual) QGIS HEAD on Feisty Fawn. What’s QGIS HEAD? It’s the current development version that includes the tasty Python bindings that allow you to write both QGIS plugins and stand-alone mapping applications. With apt-get or synaptic, install the following: bison fftw3 fftw3-dev flex g++ libgeos-c1 libgeos-dev libgeos2c2a libpq-dev libpq5 libqt4-core libqt4-dev libqt4-gui libqt4-qt3support libqt4-sql libreadline5-dev libsqlite3-dev libtiff4-dev proj pyqt4-dev-tools python-qt4 python-qt4-dev python-sip4 python-sip4-dev qt4-designer qt4-dev-tools qt4-doc qt4-qtconfig sip4 sqlite3 tcl8.
Matthew Perry poses the question: Why is the command line a dying art?. Funny how these things go–I was thinking about posting on this same topic just the other day, although I may be repeating myself. The efficiencies of the command line cannot be overstated. I too have seen that deer in the headlights look when a GUI-only user is first exposed to a command prompt. I have also seen people spend days on a data conversion project that could easily be accomplished in hours (or less).
This is an experience report–your mileage may vary_ I decided to give JUMP another try today. So I downloaded the latest release (1.2) and unzipped it into a directory. Looking at the JUMP Installation Guide reveals the document is written totally for Windows users. No problem, but I’m using a Mac. Looking in the bin directory there is a shell script named JUMPWorkbench-mac.sh. OK, make that executable and give it a go:
